This invention relates to a disc player having a disc guide mechanism which, in inserting a disc into the disc inserting opening thereof, operates to position the disc at the center of the disc inserting opening.
Recently, a compact disc has been developed which has a recording layer having pits corresponding to digital signals obtained by converting analog sounds (hereinafter referred merely as "a disc"). With the disc, analog sounds are optically reproduced by using a laser beam applied by the reading head of a CD (compact disc) player. The disc is much superior both in tone quality and in operability to conventional LP record discs. Hence, the compact disc together with its CD player has quickly come into wide use. Accordingly, CD players to be mounted on vehicles have been developed. One example of the automotive disc players is as shown in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 101 designates a disc of 12 cm in diameter in which pieces of music have been recorded. When the disc 101 is inserted into a disc inserting opening 102, it is conveyed to a predetermined position (which is substantially the center of the CD player) by a loading mechanism 103, where it is fixedly mounted on the turntable 105 by a clamper arm 104. This disc 101 thus mounted is rotated by a spindle motor (not shown), so that the pieces of music are reproduced with a reading head (not shown). In the automotive CD player, the clamper arm 104, the turntable, and the reading head are supported in floating manner so that they are substantially free from vibration during traveling.
On the other hand, a disc 106 of 8 cm in diameter, which is much smaller in diameter than the disc 101 of 12 cm in diameter, has been proposed in the art.
The above-described conventional automotive CD player suffers from the problem that it is rather difficult to insert a disc into the disc inserting opening 102 at the middle, since the width of the opening 102 is wide. Also, a stop portion for positioning the disc is formed for the large disc 101. Thus, when the small disc 106 is delivered to the stop portion, there is a fear that the small disc would run over a predetermined stop position.
This difficulty may be eliminated to some extent by provision of the centering mechanism and a guide plate.
However, since providing the centering mechanism at the disc inserting opening makes the entire mechanism complicated, an alternative solution may be the provision of the centering mechanism on the disc guide plate. The present invention contemplates the aforementioned drawback, and an object of the present invention is to provide a disc reproducing apparatus provided with a disc-guiding device in which the centering mechanism is not required at the disc inserting opening as well as the inserted small and large discs can be accurately guided to the clamp or stop position.